Public Use

Municipalities and counties have joined forces with environmental groups to halt hydraulic fracking and related well stimulation techniques. Environmental groups have filed suits under the National Environmental Policy Act...more

The America Invents Act (AIA) changes the traditional calculus in determining whether to seek patenting an invention or to maintain it as a trade secret. This shift in intellectual property protection is the result of two...more

Amidst reports of rising home prices throughout California and fears of a new housing bubble, controversial plans floated by California cities to deal with the lingering effects of the mortgage meltdown by invoking their...more

We all knew this was coming (see my post from July 23). If you poke a sleeping giant, it's going to file a lawsuit against you in federal court. Yesterday, in response to the City of Richmond's preliminary actions to...more

In 2007, Dey L.P., Dey Inc., and their parent company Mylan, Inc. (collectively, "Dey") sued Sunovion Pharmaceutical, Inc. ("Sunovion"; formerly known as Sepracor, Inc.) for infringement of five of Dey's patents....more

Many real estate industry professionals are familiar with the government's substantial power and discretion in land-use permitting. Land-use applicants on the verge of lucrative development opportunities find themselves in a...more

Eminent domain or condemnation is the process by which the government is permitted to acquire a citizen’s private property for public use, after paying just compensation. Typically, property is acquired by the government...more

In Dey, L.P. v. Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Sunovion, and remanded for further consideration of whether Sunovion’s clinical trial...more

“[A]n agreement of confidentiality, or circumstances creating a similar expectation of secrecy, may negate a ‘public use’ where there is not commercial exploitation” [even] when an unaffiliated third party is responsible for...more

Now that the March 16, 2013 effective date of the first-to-file provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is fast-approaching, I have been reviewing the commentary in the USPTO’s February 14, 2013 Federal...more

This is the first installment in a series of articles related to lender-involved condemnation. This article provides an introduction to the principles of eminent domain and condemnation in a question and answer format. The...more

Iligan v. Ungacta

One of the biggest dangers of not providing adequate constitutional protections for private property is that public officials can misuse their power to take property for private gains. Government actors, after all, have an...more

Originally published in BNA’s Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal on 09/28/2012.
When is a clinical trial an invalidating public use of an invention? Courts have struggled with this question — one particularly...more